Welcome to CDC stacks | High Incidence of Unplanned Pregnancy after Antiretroviral Therapy Initiation: Findings from a Prospective Cohort Study in South Africa - 22750 | CDC Public Access

Note: Javascript is disabled or is not supported by your browser. For this reason, some items on this page will be unavailable. For more information about this message, please visit this page:
About CDC.gov

Increased fertility rates in HIV-infected women receiving antiretroviral therapy (ART) have been attributed to improved immunological function; it is unknown to what extent the rise in pregnancy rates is due to unintended pregnancies.

Methods

Non-pregnant women ages 18–35 from four public-sector ART clinics in Johannesburg, South Africa, were enrolled into a prospective cohort and followed from August 2009–March 2011. Fertility intentions, contraception and pregnancy status were measured longitudinally at participants' routine ART clinic visits.

Rates of unintended pregnancies among women on ART are high, including women recently initiating ART with lower CD4 counts and higher viral loads. A substantial burden of pregnancy loss was observed. Integration of contraceptive services and counselling into ART care is necessary to reduce maternal and child health risks related to mistimed and unwanted pregnancies. Further research into injectable contraceptive failures on ART is warranted.

Use of the antiretroviral drug efavirenz (EFV) is not recommended by the WHO or South African HIV treatment guidelines during the first trimester of pregnancy due to potential fetal teratogenicity; there is little evidence of how clinicians manage EF...

Despite efforts to increase access to HIV testing and counseling services, population coverage remains low. As a result, many people in sub-Saharan Africa do not know their own HIV status or the status of their sex partner(s). Recent evidence, howeve...

Background : Preventing unintended pregnancies among HIV-positive women through family planning (FP) reduces pregnancy-related morbidity and mortality, decreases the number of pediatric HIV infections, and has also proven to be a cost-effective way t...

The authors conducted a retrospective cohort study of unplanned care interruption (UCI) among adults initiating antiretroviral therapy (ART) from 2009 to 2011 in a Nigerian clinic. The authors used repeated measures regression to model the impact of ...

for the Partners in Prevention HSV/HIV Transmission Study and Partners PrEP Study Teams

Published:

Nov 2015

Source:

AIDS. 29(17):2353-2359.

Description:

Objective : To assess whether antiretroviral therapy (ART) may diminish the effectiveness of hormonal contraceptive methods. : Methods : Using data from 5,153 HIV-infected women followed prospectively one to three years in three HIV prevention studie...